The Left and Right Must Stop the Establishment’s Perpetual War Machine

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, some of us tried to raise questions of
U.S. foreign policy. I got my mic
cut on O’Reilly’s show. Others got far worse – a friend basically
felt he had to move out of his neighborhood he was so reviled for criticizing
the US’s militarism. Oh, yeah, and hundreds of thousands of people got
killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.

The root causes of the 9/11 attacks were hardly discussed – unless it
was people deriding Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell for blaming gay folks.

Now, there’s no meaningful peace movement. Party as a result of that,
we’re not having a serious discussion we should be about foreign policy
after the Paris attacks: How US– and Western – foreign policy manifests hatred
and all that brings.

One might have thought that would be possible – the target of this attack was
not the US, though it could be the next target. But that should give us some
breathing room as well as a measure of urgency to think things through.

The major policy debate now is about Syrian refugees.

This is part of a political pattern: The two party establishment agrees on
a series of issues and those issues are largely ignored. (Perpetual war.)

Problem is, sometimes what they agree on (perpetual war) is what causes the
other issue (refugees).

Right now, both the Democratic and Republican establishments both agree on
a course of perpetual war. There’s virtually no remorse about having pushed
for regime change in Syria and Libya and that leading to enormous human suffering
that we’re mostly blind to.

When the Obama administration made an overt push for war in Syria in 2013,
the left and right united and stopped it.

But ISIS threats gave the Obama administration the pretext it so seemed to
desire to have a sustained bombing campaign, with thousands of strikes in Syria
and Iraq the last year and a half – which is largely ignored such that now “critics”
of US policy suggest that the US bomb Syria, as if it hasn’t been – and
that could be the actual problem.

Now, Democratic Party politicos are talking about the humanity of Syrian refugees
and ideals of the US as a sanctuary. And Republican politicos are talking about
alleged security concerns from letting refugees in. While I think we should
let far more than a mere 10,000 refugees, which is what the Obama administration
is talking about, I don’t think that’s the issue we really need
to be talking about now.

The real issue is that the Democratic Party has participated in perpetual war
policies that are leading to Syrians becoming refugees. The real issue is that
the Republican Party has participated in perpetual war policies that are leading
to greater insecurity for people in the US

The issue of the refugees, while obvious real to real people is being seized
on because it’s a wedge issue to keep the Democratic base and the Republican
base shouting at each other rather than to examine the underlying issue: Perpetual
war and the current set of US colonial allies in the Mideast.

It’s the nightmare of the establishment that the left and right wake
up to the fact that they are manipulated by the Democratic Party and Republican
Party establishments.

A major issue is that the public is prone to scapegoating the vulnerable, like
Syrian refugees, when no other cause of the problem is highlighted. There are
obvious causes for the problems coming from the Mideast. But there’s a
silence of conspiracy about them. At the top of the list is is the US government’s
backing of the authoritarian Saudi regime that has fostered Wahabism, a twisted
from of Islam used by al-Qaeda and ISIS.

But even the most progressive Democrats are silent on this. Just this week,
Barbara Lee – possibly the most left wing member of Congress – was asked on
“Democracy Now” about US arms to Saudi Arabia. She
didn’t contemn it.

Bernie Sanders talks about refugees; he can bring a lump to every throat in
the hall while talking about economic inequality in the US But his solution
for ISIS is to get the Saudis to “get their hands dirty.” Sorry,
Bernie,
but the Saudis hands are dirty enough as it is. They fostered jihadis like
ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria and are now bombing Yemen, ripping human beings apart.

So, at the CBS
debate the day after the Paris attacks, Sanders didn’t even want to
talk about foreign policy. It was tragic really. He could have laid into US
foreign policy, he could have said that by arming the Saudis we’ve fostered
problems, it would have jolted the campaign and the public could have been engaged
in foreign policy in a meaningful way.

But he didn’t.

The most he could do is criticize the invasion of Iraq, which is valid –
no one who voted for the Iraq war is qualified for any title other than inmate
– but 13 years later, totally inadequate. Whatever you have to say about
economy (and even here I think Sanders could be better) will ultimately be trumped
by the fact that you can’t articulate a path out of perpetual war. If
you don’t show you’ve got a path out of perpetual war, the people
will pick someone who they figure knows how to do perpetual war.

But someone is going to have to break with the backing of autocratic regimes
and perpetual war, because I’ve got news for you: Perpetual war is going
to cost you a lot. The Vietnam War helped undermine the war on poverty – Martin
Luther King called it a “demonic suction tube.” Perpetual war is
going to make you lose your soul. Perpetual war will make you an accomplice
to murder many times over. Perpetual war will mean generations more of Muslim
youth driven to madness against the US Perpetual war is going to potentially
lead to nuclear war. Perpetual war will mean an even more militarized police
force. Perpetual war will likely mean more of a repressive state. Perpetual
war will mean you can’t march against climate change – or anything else.
Perpetual war will mean that refugees and other folks get treated like trash.
Perpetual war means your kid can’t get a job in much of anything other
than the military. Perpetual war means soldiers with PTSD coming home and beating
the crap out of their wives and traumatizing their children. Perpetual war will
mean at every public venue you’ve got to go through security so that you
can scratch yourself without court approval.

There’s a hunger out there for another course.

Fact is, the Republican candidates leading in the polls are those – at
least in public persona, whatever their faults may be – that are furthest
away from the foreign policy establishment.

There was a group called Come Home America
that aimed to bring the left and right together against Empire.

Part of the reason that didn’t take off is that elections are movement
killers. People constantly being pushed – especially in election years
– to focus on symptoms of policies gone wrong, like the Syrian refugees,
without looking at the elephant in the room: Perpetual War, brought to you by
the Democratic and Republican Parties and which ruined the refugees’ lives
– and will ruin many more unless the left and right join to stop it.

The perpetual war machine is an unavoidable corollary of Israel's existence. The US establishment couldn't stop it even if they wanted to. Perpetual war will end when Jews worldwide realise that it is indeed caused by Israel's existence and that, therefore, a pseudo-European nation-state for the Jewish people in the historic land of their ancestors is an unworkable illusion which should be abandoned. I see no sign of that happening anytime soon. It might be one of the consequences of WWIII.